The Houses Of Philip Johnson

Stover Jenkins & David Mohney

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Review

For almost 75 years Philip Johnson has been at the centre of modern architecture’s development, and still today at 95 maintains an office in New York.  The Connecticut house he built for himself in 1949, his celebrated ‘Glass House’, is perhaps the single most influential dwelling of the last century.  That he is less celebrated than Frank Lloyd Wright is due in part to his somewhat reticent nature and also to the fact that, having started his career as critic and curator in the Thirties, he readily acknowledged the inspiration of sources as varied as Schinkel and Ledoux, as well as the leaders of modernism such as Gropius, Le Corbusier and, above all Mies van der Rohe, which led some, not least Lloyd Wright, to question his originality.

Van der Rohe had included drawings for a glass home in a 1947 exhibition and Johnson is straightforward in his statement “The idea comes from Mies.  My debt is clear, in spite of obvious differences,” a dignified declaration, and the two men went on to collaborate on the Seagram building on Park Avenue, one of the most influential public buildings in America.

The book, as well as his career, divides quite naturally, starting with his architectural education and the early years, then examining Johnson’s complete domestic oeuvre, over 30 built and 40 unbuilt projects.  The longest and most detailed section considers ‘The Glass House’, 27 stages in the planning, with sketches, plans, models and early photographs, three years in the execution in which he proved himself to be his own best client.  Inevitably, this dream house, for so it turned out to be, engendered others and throughout the Fifties the list of his clients reads like the USA’s ‘The Social Register’.  In the Sixties and Seventies, in line with his public commissions and recognition, he widened his range, (not, I fear, always for the better) and some of his private schemes reflect his Lincoln Center brief, surely his least successful work.  Taken as a whole however, his is a career of unparalleled brilliance.

Authors Jenkins and Mahoney, with an introduction and afterword by learned critics, and backed up with the telling photographs of Steven Brooke, have produced a book which is scholarly, comprehensive and visually stunning, in keeping with Philip Johnson’s protean talents.  It is a very considerable achievement. - review by Stewart Grimshaw